Positive Mindset Helps Women’s Rowing Make History

The Tufts University women’s rowing team is nothing short of exceptional. In the last three seasons, the Jumbos have won back-to-back NCAA Division III national championships and a trio of consecutive Head of the Charles Regattas. 

With these triumphs in mind, we sat down with two of the team’s seniors, Hannah Jiang, A26, and Rose Tinkjian, A26, to get their takes on what makes this crew such a dream team. 

Jiang, a coxswain, and Tinkjian, who rows the stroke seat, are the only two athletes on the Tufts women’s rowing team in the first varsity eight boat who face each other—and as they say, “stare into each other’s soul.” This unique relationship has helped the pair develop their own language.

When words fail—or can’t be heard—each takes nonverbal cues from the other, reading body language and facial expressions to communicate technical changes that need to be made to improve the boat’s speed or efficiency.

“Rose can pick up on when I’m unsure if something in the boat is going well, and I can pick up on Rose intuiting that something is off—it just helps us make the boat go faster,” Jiang said.

Tinkjian and Jiang have had opportunities to improve their communication in the classroom, too, with several of their classes overlapping. Jiang is a cognitive and brain sciences major, and Tinkjian is majoring in biopsychology. Despite the sizable amount of time they spend together as teammates, waking early for practice and their rigorous training schedules, Tinkjian and Jiang still opted to work together on class projects. 

“It makes it so much easier to get things done, and done well, when you have a preset community,” Tinkjian said.

Tufts University President Sunil Kumar poses for a photo with the NCAA Division III champion women’s rowing team on Sept. 12, 2025. Photo: Jandro Cisneros

What word would you use to describe your team?

Hannah Jiang: There are so many words that I could use, but I’m going to say “tenacious.”

Rose Tinkjian: I would say “grateful,” in terms of the fabric of the team as a whole—we’re grateful for the team now, for teams past, for coaches, all of that.

What do you think makes this team so special?

Tinkjian: We have a very special energy. There is a lot of joy that goes into doing what we do, and nobody on the team is doing it because they have to. We aren’t competitive with each other, and we have this hive mind when we are on the water—we’re big and loud and energetic—and it creates a very happy workplace. It makes it a lot easier to do hard things when you’re doing them with people you like and who like to do them, too.

Jiang: We’re just always so positive. Regardless of how practice goes or how people are feeling individually, the general vibe of getting to practice is just being grateful, being happy, being positive that we “get to,” which is a phrase that our coach, Lily Siddall, and the team say a lot—we get to compete in a sport we love. 

What do you hope people take away from your success?

Jiang: I hope they understand what goes on behind the scenes. When you win a lot and when you’re in the spotlight, everyone sees those moments when you’re on the podium or when you’re celebrating with your team. But I hope people actually get to see how much work that we put in to get to those moments. 

Tinkjian: We work so hard and you can’t just slip into first and then hold the top spot. You’ve got to keep working for that because everyone’s climbing for that top. Nobody sees the less glorified parts where we’re spending a million minutes of our time doing homework, working out, making sure we’re strong, making sure we’re healthy, recovering. All of that is super important and that is what makes us so good.

What advice would you give to someone interested in going out for the team?

Tinkjian: You should always give your own 100%. If you can carry that mentality with you day to day, then everything you do gets better and easier. If you feel like you’re super sore and tired today and you’re only at 80% because you had a crazy lift yesterday, but you’re giving all of that 80%, you’re still going to smile because you feel like you’ve accomplished that. And then once you’re smiling, it’s like, why would I stop then? 

Jiang: Building on that, I’d say success takes a lot of time. Rowing’s one of those sports where you don’t see immediate success or improvements from your technical changes. It takes a lot of time. I feel like people put in thousands and thousands and thousands of reps just to get one technical change down or one split faster. Anyone who comes to Tufts will see success over four years if they put in the work, do the small things, train, recover, and lift. A big part of that is dependent on being patient with yourself and just knowing that it will come if you put in the minutes and the work.

What makes your relationship as coxswain and stroke seat unique? 

Jiang: Rose is the only person I really can see when I’m in a boat. She’s the person I’m staring directly at. She can feel a lot more of what’s going on behind her than I can see. I can just look at her and tell if something is going well or not. We’ve been in the same boat in these roles for close to three years, so we’ve kind of built a lot of nonverbal cues. Picking up on those on both ends helps us make the boat go faster.

Tinkjian: No matter what seat you’re rowing in, you’re only looking at someone’s back unless you’re looking at Hannah—which unfortunately means you’re making pretty direct eye contact the whole time because you can’t look elsewhere. So not only am I staring at her for two hours a day, six days a week, but she’s also staring into my soul when I’m in these super vulnerable positions where I’m cranking it really hard or maybe I’m a little sick and I’m really tired and it’s early in the morning and there’s no way to hide that from her. To be that physically close, and to be successful, you have to trust the other person to see you so directly and openly. 

How do you build camaraderie during your downtime? 

Tinkjian: If I didn’t want to hang out with these people, I wouldn’t see them for two hours every morning. And then also after that, we do a lot of other hard things together and doing it as a team makes things easier. I’m talking lifting together, doing homework together, taking some classes together. Hannah and I have similar majors, so we’ve had a few classes together and have done a few assignments together. There’s just a lot of love that goes into our lives outside of the sport. It just makes it easier to build bonds because there’s so much to be done, and why do it alone?

When things aren’t going well, how do you work through adversity?

Jiang: Weather can be a huge factor when it comes to rowing, and the Spring 2025 season was incredibly windy, rainy, and cold. The conditions were definitely not ideal for any of our races, but when we race in those conditions, we talk about it beforehand and I do my best to deliver a gameplan that inspires confidence. On days like the NCAA championships in June—where I think the wind gusts were up to 35 miles per hour, and steady winds of 20—I’ll tell them that we can’t change the wind, but we can be better than everybody else because we can handle it better than anybody else. That’s the kind of mindset we have—to go out there and race as best as you can, no matter the weather.

Hannah Jiang, left, gives direction to stroke seat rower Rose Tinkjian. Photo: Courtesy of Stockton Photography

What sets this team apart from others you’ve been on or competed against?

Tinkjian: One is that we have a very open and human female head coach, which is pretty rare in all sports, even in women’s rowing. It’s just so nice to have someone you can look up to and who it feels like understands you. 

Jiang: Lily does such a good job running this team. She’s so positive all the time. I’ve had a couple of coaches throughout my time rowing, and Lily’s by far the most positive, but she’s also the one who wants you to get better by being the best version of yourself. The way that she goes about it is very productive and helpful.

How do you stay motivated in the off season?

Tinkjian: This is a harder question for me to answer because this isn’t something that I have to think twice about. Even in the off season, that positivity comes into play and I’m excited to gather three times a week with my teammates to work out and see what we can do. Those practices are cool because they’re something we do on our own accord—we don’t practice with a coach—and I’m always so excited to be with these people and to see what can happen.

What are you each hoping to accomplish in your final season on the team?

Jiang: We both have big goals and big dreams for the spring, but I would just love to push the standard and see how much faster we can get. But also, I want to just enjoy it because the spring moves by so quickly, and not to get all sentimental but the spring is the last time where I’ll be with these people and this team every week again. So when I have to wake up at 5 a.m. and wonder why, I get up because I want to be there for my teammates, for the people that make this sport so special. I’m grateful for every time I get to be out there on the water with my teammates.

Tinkjian: In my senior spring, I just want to make sure that I’m contributing to a team where there isn’t any doubt about our ability. I want everyone to be as strong and as fast and as confident as they possibly can be, and if that’s what I can leave with the team, that would be ideal.